Electrical Outlets and Amps

[Nick250]

Probably not. Re read post five and go from there. I did not reread everything in the post just now but I would trust whatever WmAx has to say.

Nick

 

[darien87]

Lots of good info here.

Chris, you and Peng should be teaching EE courses somewhere. (Maybe you already are)

I'm waiting for my Acurus 200x3 amp to arrive, and now I'm starting to wonder if I might have any issues. In my sig, I plan to have everything, except for the 2 subs, plugged into my Belkin PF31, using the swithed output of the Belkin to turn on the Acurus when the receiver turns on. I have the Rythmik sub plugged into the same outlet as the one the Belkin will be plugged into. The Boston sub is plugged into another outlet, (not sure if they're on the same circuit or not).

I had planned on perhaps moving the plug for the Rythmik sub to another outlet on the other side of the room and having ONLY the Belkin and it's components plugged into their own outlet. Will this make a difference?

 

[Reorx]

I had everything listed below plugged into a single 15A outlet.
As well as a 37" CRT, dvd player, and a VCR. All on at the same time.
My 2 amps combined pull about 1500 watts RMS @ 4ohms

If I had my stereo cranked 95-100 db+ (not normal listening levels) with all the components on, the lights would slightly dim to the music. If I tried to turn everything on at once, everything would start, except for the CRT.

If you got a bunch of amps, the initial power draw from turning everything on at once would probably be a problem. A power sequencer would take care of that. Check out Furman Sound.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I didnt think that amps continuesly pulled the max amperage from the outlet if you were only using a smaller percentage of power.
For example (these calculations are made up): Lets say a amp is rated at 1000 watts per channel, for 7 channels, that'd translate to 14 amps. if you only have it at 1/2 volume, really only using 500 watts per channel, you'd pull 7 amps from the outlet. As the volume increases, the demand for more amperage increases.

 

[PENG]

Lots of good info here.

Chris, you and Peng should be teaching EE courses somewhere. (Maybe you already are)

I'm waiting for my Acurus 200x3 amp to arrive, and now I'm starting to wonder if I might have any issues. In my sig, I plan to have everything, except for the 2 subs, plugged into my Belkin PF31, using the swithed output of the Belkin to turn on the Acurus when the receiver turns on. I have the Rythmik sub plugged into the same outlet as the one the Belkin will be plugged into. The Boston sub is plugged into another outlet, (not sure if they're on the same circuit or not).

I had planned on perhaps moving the plug for the Rythmik sub to another outlet on the other side of the room and having ONLY the Belkin and it's components plugged into their own outlet. Will this make a difference?

If possible, you should plug the amp and the receiver into an outlet that is on a separate circuit that does not have any other loads such as lights on it. Otherwise you may not get the best performance under certain conditions when everything on that circuit happens to be drawing their maximum demand, especially if that outlet is very far from the panel board.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I didnt think that amps continuesly pulled the max amperage from the outlet if you were only using a smaller percentage of power.

You are correct. Most of the time at normal signals and listening levels your amp may pull a couple of watts and certainly not all channels at the same instant. And, when a channel may be driven to full power, it is for very short duration and some/most of the spikes may be made up from the filter capacitors.

Same applies for subs.

 

[rmongiovi]

It seems to me that you all might be a little optimistic that an electronics vendor is going to use the strict definition of VA versus Watt when they report the characteristics of their device.

It's never been my experience that they're particularly rigorous in their use of terms.

I just wouldn't want to bet that because they say "watts" on the back of the amp that they actually took power factor into account. In fact, I wouldn't necessarily bet that they actually measured anything. More than likely it's just a theoretical "this is how much power it ought to use."